1888 N321 S. F. Hess California League Jack Hayes

Graded POOR 10 by SGC. Extremely rare sample card of Jack Hayes from the N321 S. F. Hess California League series. Featuring full-color drawings on front, the forty-card N321 series depicts minor leaguers from the California League and is one of the few color issues of the nineteenth century. The player name and position is printed along the top border, with "California League" arced over the player image and advertising for S. F. Hess & Co's. Creole Cigarettes along the bottom border. This card is new to the modern collecting world. It is one of the highlights from a mostly 1910-era original-owner card collection that included just a few nineteenth-century cards. The offered card displays vibrant colors, even rounding to the corners, and slight wear to the surface, extending from the brim of Hayes' hat to the right border. The blank reverse is entirely clean with a pronounced wet-sheet transfer visible. SGC has graded only eighty-seven cards in total from the N321 series! Despite its modest assigned grade, this card remains an extremely desirable example of one of nineteenth-century baseball-card collecting's most elusive sample cards. SOLD FOR $840

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